Last weekend we cooked Fish soup with two nice girls form the UK. They were interested in vegetarian dishes, so they chose the soup. It gave me the idea to write about Fish soup. The Hungarian name for fish soup actually refers to the fishermen (Halaszle meaning Fisherman’s soup) who made it. This is a very popular food in Hungary and there are a lot of variations. The two most famous of them are made in Szeged and Baja.
Szeged is a third largest city in Hungary and lies on the banks of Tisza River. In Szeged there is made a dense basic broth with onion, which is then pureed.
In Baja, a southerly port on the Danube, they don’t sift the soup and in this soup, the most important ingredient is homemade ‘matchstick’ pasta.
In Hungary, the traditional fish soup is still often cooked outdoors over open fire in a special goulash pot (cauldron), for example when the family or friends gather and usually men cook it.
Our Fish soup was made according to the recipe of Marti’s father who prefers Szeged style. What you need for a good fish soup are: fish (in Hungary usually carp and/or catfish), water, onion, pepper, tomato, ground red paprika and salt.
If you are interested in Fish soup, you can take part in Hungarian Fish soup festivals or our Hungarian cooking course and you can taste this delicious dish :-))).